Social crises in Iran are increasing daily, and those who hurt most and without any support under the mullahs’ rule are Iran’s women.
Recently it has been seen that some women in the country’s metropoles are searching for their daily income on the streets. These women are mostly resorting to scrounging garbage and are cardboard sleepers who are risking their health in such jobs to have the opportunity of one meal per day.
These women suffering from poverty believe that a job that is not prostitution is good because they are not dealing with their dignity and health, and unfortunately in a country like Iran where the last concern of the government is the people, this can be only by collecting garbage from the streets in runoffs and the city’s trash.
But the sad reality is these women when they are still young become victims of human traffickers and the prostitution mafia gangs controlled by the regime, and when they are in bad mental and physical situations, they turn to waste collecting.
There is no exact number of these people but, Sepideh Alizadeh, CEO of Noor Sepid Hedayat Harm Reduction Institute, said that “there is no specific number for the runoff waste collectors, but my field estimate shows that only in the Noor Sepid Hedayat Harm Reduction Institute, in the past year, 900 people have filed a case for the first time at our center. However, these individuals have also stepped into our center with their demands and have to get the necessary support.” (Rokna, October 6, 2021)
This revealed that the number of these women must be much higher, and no one, even the government, knows the real damage.
She about a collapsed society, adding: “We are so engaged that instead of professional and professional work, we are still stuck with the basic needs of the Maslow Pyramid. People may not know this, but many people do not become homeless because of addiction, but due to mental illness and lack of a good family. After 16 years of working in the field of addiction and social harm, it was amazing to me that today the dormitory is filled with other than addicted people.” (Rokna, October 6, 2021)
Finally, about the regime’s carelessness, which of course should not be interpreted as carelessness but as the regime’s intention to involve the people with poverty and social harms, about a solution, she added:
“We don’t have one answer and one specific way to answer this question, but we need to have solutions and options for the many different people affected to choose the right course of treatment. These people have not reached the end in one night to bring them back to normal life in one night. The harm reduction program has been dimmed in our country these days, and social harm activists are extremely afraid to continue their work.
“Activists in the field of social harm refuse to say that we need a consumption room so that drug users can use it, as the cultural and social context has not yet been updated and they are being attacked by the authorities and the public.” (Rokna, October 6, 2021)
